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Drink

A Delightful Beverage

A warm beverage made from tamarind, currants, raisins, milk, egg, sugar, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Currant and raisin are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 6,180 recipes mention both. Both carry gamma-nonanolactone, which smells coconut, creamy. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: egg, milk (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Directions

Make the tamarind liquid

  1. Boil 3 pints of water with 1 teacup of tamarinds, a few currants, and a few raisins until it evaporates by one third.

  2. Strain the mixture and let it cool.

Make the milk mixture and serve

  1. In a bowl, combine ½ pint of warm milk, 1 beaten egg, a little sugar, and a little nutmeg.

  2. Drink it warm first thing in the morning.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Currant + raisintop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together6,180 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  2. Raisin + nutmegtop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together5,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-terpineol (lilac, floral).

  3. Tamarind + raisintop 5% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together36 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, creamy).

  4. Tamarind + sugartop 6% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together362 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

  5. Tamarind + nutmegtop 7% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together19 recipes

    Shared aroma: myrcene (balsamic, herbaceous).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Tamarinds
Provide the tart, sour flavour that gives the drink its character.
Egg
Adds richness and body to the warm milk, giving the drink a thicker texture.
Milk
Forms the creamy base that the egg and sugar are mixed into.

Flavor stand-ins for the tamarind

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (currant, raisin, milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg):

  1. Figbetter flavor fit
  2. Vanillabetter flavor fit
  3. Applebetter flavor fit
  4. Tamarindthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against currant, raisin, milk, egg, sugar, nutmeg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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